In honor of the day I thought I would pop on here and share a snippet from my modern romance set in Ireland. This is the story that I plan on shopping around and seeing if there is interest from an agent. This is the first time that the main characters meet!
Enjoy :)
Birds were singing. Her eyes flicked to where sunlight
was streaming through the window. Where was she?
Blinking, it took her a moment to realize that she was
not in her apartment above the bakery. Milo was nowhere to be found, he was
half a world away.
And there were birds.
She managed to sit. Her ponytail had loosened itself
so that strands of blonde fell across her eyes. Somehow in her sleep she had
taken off her jeans, and half wrapped herself in the quilt.
Coffee, she needed coffee.
Rucking up the quilt more snugly around her waist, she
walked across the bare wooden floor to the little kitchen. And bless her heart
Aoife had a coffee pot on the counter! Tucking a wayward strand of hair behind
her ear, she searched the cabinets for a bag of coffee. After several minutes
of almost frantic searching, her efforts were rewarded with a small bag.
She sniffed at the grounds. Still pungent to her
senses with what she thought might be a bit of vanilla. She filled the pot and
set everything up to brew before shuffling back to the bed.
Her heart jumped when she heard her alarm go off on
her phone. She fumbled around in the blankets desperate to find the phone and
turn off the alarm. Finally she managed to narrow down the hiding spot of the
thing in the back pocket of her jeans.
The eleven o’ clock alarm was telling her it was time
to go to bed was blinking in large electric blue numbers. She stared at the screen for a few minutes
trying to compute. Her mind took some time to compute that she hadn’t set her
phone back. No smart phone for her; just a simple, indestructible, flip phone.
She would have to manually go in and change her home time zone.
Her mind shifted gears as she tried to do the math.
Ireland was six hours ahead of Chicago….it was 5 in the morning.
Finally she heard the noise that she loved to hear.
Fresh coffee hitting the bottom of the empty pot as it began to fill. She
breathed a sigh of relief; at least the coffee maker didn’t have a glitch or
need a trick to operate.
This time she left the quilt on the bed and padded to
the cupboards in search of a mug to fill with the coffee. Lifting the now full
mug to her nose, her ears barely registered that someone was outside of her
door until the door sprang open with a bang. The person opening the door was
momentarily hidden as the door swung toward her. Had she been prone to screaming,
she would have. Instead she could only stand frozen, her hands wrapped tightly
around the mug of coffee, her back against the cabinets, standing in only her
underwear and t-shirt.
In the space of a few heartbeats the figure pitched
forward into her still slightly dark loft. When it stood she could tell by the
outline that it was a man. When he turned in her direction, she didn’t yelp,
instead she flung the still hot coffee at him.
“EEH!” The figure blundered backward almost hitting
the table and chairs. “What was that afor?” The brogue was lilting and musical,
if not a little slurred.
“That was for barging in here!” She wished that she
had pants on, or at least the quilt to wrap up in. No use for it now. She
squared her shoulders and took a step forward.
“Get out!”
“Well, now, hang on a minute. Kenneth lets me crash up
here. This loft is mine too!” She watched as he wiped coffee from his face in
rough motion.
“Not when someone else is paying for it.” True, Aoife
hadn’t asked for anything, but Aubriee was not about to stay in at Bed and
Breakfast and not pay something for the time.
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry miss…” He ducked his head,
shaggy dark hair swinging as he turned towards the door. Before stepping through
he looked over his shoulder at her, “Never thought I’d like the color pink so
much.” He winked at her, and she promptly slammed the door in his smiling Irish
face.
If she hadn’t been so tired, and slightly jet lagged,
not to mention she had yet to have a cup of coffee, she probably would have
laughed. Instead she turned on her heel and poured another cup before locking
the door and heading to the shower.
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